Scion of the Point-to-Point community and a leading trainer in the 80s and 90s, Sheila Crow died this week at the age of 87. She leaves a legacy of family steeped in the sport from head to toe.

Born one of five brothers and sisters in Montgomeryshire to a farming family in 1938, it was inevitable that Sheila would immerse herself in the equestrian world. She rode her first Point-to-Point winner at 16, and subsequently became known as a trainer of pointers and hunter chasers, grooming many a young horse to graduate to racing under Rules.

That career reached its apogee in 2009 when she trained Cappa Bleu to win the amateur division's highest accolade, the (then) Christie's Foxhunter Chase at the Cheltenham Festival, under Richard Burton.

Burton, one of the most successful riders between the flags, owes much of that success to a string of winners between the flags for Sheila and husband Edward, who had died the previous July, making the Cheltenham triumph a poignant one.

Stratford devotees will recall My Flora winning the John Corbett Cup, the novice hunters' championship in 2012, one of numerous runners Crow fielded at our Hunters' evening fixture.

A shrewd judge of both horses and humans, the no-nonsense Crow propelled her children, Alistair and Lucy to national championships, whilst more recently, grandson Henry has displayed admirable cool in his riding of Barton Snow at Cheltenham and Aintree.

That knack of horsemanship is a family trait. Sheila's brother Roy Edwards was a professional jockey, best known for his Champion Hurdle victory on Saucy Kit in 1967, but other brother Gordy won over 100 races between the flags, and second brother Charles was a clever breeder of showjumpers whose son Carl competed for Team GB at the Sydney Olympics.

Niece Sarah is mother to the Skelton pair making waves in the sport presently. Proof were it needed that this sport is about breeding.

If her professional achievements were fulsome, this is not to say that Sheila Crow was anything other than warm-hearted, generous with praise as much as criticism, and ambitious both for her horses and children as a devoted mother and grandmother. Even as recently as May, she was at Eyton Races to enjoy the venue where she'd enjoyed her first winner.

A funeral will take place at Hadnall, Shropshire on July 29.